


Different Devils

by LovelyPoet



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Nogitsune Stiles, POV Sheriff Stilinski, Post-Episode: s03e18 Riddled, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:56:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1197483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/pseuds/LovelyPoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A demon, Scott explained... John listened to it all, felt the words wash over him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different Devils

**Author's Note:**

> If I sat down and wrote 1,000 stories, 995 of them would be relatively fluffy, happy-ending type stuff. This is one of the other five. Sorry. 
> 
> Just a few hundred words I needed to get out of my head before the next episode airs. Expanded from a version posted to my tumblr.

"… so it’s not what the tests say it is. It’s just. It’s not. And we’re going to… we can beat it. I know we can," Scott finishes. The sun is barely up and Stiles is still missing. John hasn’t slept and he can feel the ache of too many sleepless hours creeping their way up, making themselves known around all the jagged edges of fear and desperation that are keeping him on his feet.

"Scott," he says. "You should…"

He doesn’t finish because he knows better. Whatever Scott should be doing, what he will do is everything in his power to find Stiles, to keep him safe.

A demon, Scott explained, a malevolent spirit making itself at home inside Stiles and pushing him aside. Turning him into something else. John listened to it all, felt the words wash over him.

This new explanation is just as incomprehensible as the old, no harder or easier to accept as the truth than the first time a doctor stared across the room at him and told him his wife was disappearing right in front of him. That she still knew who he was, but just didn’t have the capacity to care anymore. That she couldn’t be trusted alone with their son, to remember he mattered, to know the right thing to do or how to do it. That it was only going to get worse.

He thinks about Stiles locked and increasingly lost in the hollow abyss of his own broken mind, nothing left of his bright, funny, strange boy. Just like Claudia, even in this. Or worse, nothing like her at all if, in the end, Stiles is still there. John shudders and feels his gut turn sour at the possibility of Stiles trapped but still fighting, forced to bear witness and carrying the guilt of whatever orders his body acts on.

He braces himself against the closest thing he can. His hands grip tight to Scott's shoulders. (When did this boy become strong enough to hold up everyone around him? How can he stand so still when John feels like the ground is shaking out from under him?)

"I swear to you," Scott says, "I'm not going to let us lose him."

And maybe everything Scott is telling him is true. Maybe this really is the world that he lives in now. One where every one of life’s mundane ways to destroy you has been overtaken by werewolves and hunters and demons (oh my!), but where there’s still a chance to win. He wants to believe in Scott's sheer determination if only because it's what Stiles would do. There are so many things that Scott has seen and done and John is only beginning to understand, but there are the things John knows, too. The pain he knows might be waiting for them either way, so much of it that he would do anything to shield Scott from if he could. He’s seen an uncaring stranger looking out from familiar eyes before, and whether it's a demon or a disease playing the devil that steals away the center of his world…he’s not sure there will really be a difference.

"Oh, God," John says, a curse and prayer. He's so weary already in the face of what is to come. 

"I'm bringing him back to us," Scott says. There is heat behind the words and, when John finds the strength to look, in the red eyes staring back at him steady and sure.

"I know you'll try, son," John says, steeling himself against the bright, sharp sting of hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://katiegeeks.tumblr.com).


End file.
